When it comes to getting bang for their buck, the Winnipeg Jets are receiving quite a bit from Kyle Wellwood.

Well, they don’t get much bang from the winger, but you get the point.

The Jets signed the professional hockey vagabond to a $700,000 contract just prior to the start of training camp, and he has turned out to be well worth the investment.

He missed his first game of the season on Tuesday night because of the flu, but he remains second in team scoring with 10 goals and 21 assists. He is plus-2 on a team full of minus players, and he has a whopping four penalty minutes (more on that later).

Wellwood has played on every line this season, becoming known as somewhat of a fixer, and head coach Claude Noel sounds like a bench boss who really wants No. 13 back in the fold next season for all he brings to the young team that is still finding its way.

“He’s a real good player. He is smart,” Noel said. “He doesn’t skate that great, but he’s a real clever player and really understands the game. The maturing part for me for Kyle Wellwood is not only his puck skills, which you see, but his reliability defensively. He’s really reliable.”

Unfortunately, Wellwood is not with the Jets on their current road trip due to a nasty case of the flu. The team is going to miss him.

Wellwood, from the outside anyway, appears to be a soft-spoken, polite 28-year-old who has been through a lot already in his professional career. He played for the Toronto Maple Leafs, which is never easy, and was often dogged by questions about his conditioning. He is in good shape now, and it’s paying off.

“You can put him in the top six or the bottom six. It doesn’t matter,” Noel said. “He’s a good player. I like him a lot. He’s a reliable guy you can play on the third line or fourth line or move him up to second. You put him in the corner with two big guys, he comes up with the puck. He uses his head.

“He’s done a really good job of finding what he needs to do as a player.”

Nor does he take penalties. Wellwood has spent just 34 minutes in the sin bin during his 457-game NHL career, which works out to one minor penalty every 25 games (although he once had a four-minute penalty for high sticking). His infractions this year were for tripping in the second game of the season versus Chicago and then a questionable unsportsmanlike penalty for diving against San Jose on Jan. 12.

He once went 159 regular-season contests without making a trip to the penalty box, but he also had minors in back-to-back games during the 2009-10 season. Goon.

“I don’t know. It’s part of my game. I just try to stay within the rules and check,” Wellwood said. “There’s lots of guys now on a lot of teams — even some of the fourth-liners — who never take penalties. That’s just from teams losing games because of power plays.

“Give up power plays against good teams, and you lose. Some of the depth guys have changed from being physical and taking penalties around the net to the opposite.”

Despite his uncanny knack for hardly ever leaving his teams short-handed, he doesn’t believe it’s an overly attractive feature of his game.

“It depends on your team,” he said.

“If your team is a physical team and has a good penalty kill, you want guys who are going to be on that line and they’ll take penalties to get an advantage. But if your team’s not good on the penalty kill, you kind of need a team that doesn’t take penalties. It’s just finding the right balance for you own team.”

Believe it or not, some coaches have told him to add to his penalty minute total. Said Wellwood: “I’ve had coaches say, ‘Go out there and be more physical. Take a penalty.’ Yeah, of course. ‘Shoot it more. Be more physical. Get in the game more. Take some penalties. Get yourself going.’ ”

Based on Noel’s assessment earlier this week, Wellwood’s game is just fine the way it is.

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